Last year when I came to the UK, soon after then I got me a new Xbox 360 from Game.co.uk as well as a Dell desktop after Christmas. The desktop was intended to run scientific simulations for my own project in the first place, but I thought it'd never hurt to consider adding an awesome graphics card. So that's why I chose XPS 430 with a Radeon HD4850.

Now here comes the problem. As people know cross-platform videogame has become a common phenomenon. Almost every highly hyped game, which is supposed to attract as many gamers as possible, now goes to cross-platform for attracting more audience from the potential consumer pool. So for people having multiple platforms, they have to choose one particular platform to play each game. Mostly this doesn't bring any trouble, in my opinion, unless you have a PC with other high-definition consoles.

The problem with a PC is its flexibility of hardware. A user can think of any combination of hardware subject to some constraints, e.g., budget, hardware availability, etc. When I was looking for a desktop at the moment, one of my consideration was to play Crysis. Eventually this Dell machine proves to be capable of this task. This also means it is capable of beating the performance of Xbox 360. Then owning this PC somehow complicates the consideration of choosing a videogame between a PC version or a Xbox 360 version.

The fact is the PC version of videogame is always cheaper than its console counterparts. Choosing the PC version is more economic, and I have better graphics performance too. Sounds pretty good, eh, doesn't it? On the other hand, we PC gamers all well know there are many exclusive issues in PC gaming, for example, the annoying DRM and the hardware compatibility. Sometimes I just wonder, why should I spend so much time to make a game run on my PC? Why not just go to a console version and let the online service deal with other things for me? I did a lot patching and setting configuration by myself before, but at the time I only played PC games and didn't worry about such things. I got no choice. I had to make it work on my PC before enjoying the game.

Now I have more choices, and I have to weigh all the pros and cons between these choices, just like all other things in my daily life. This is exactly why I feel so annoyed and be struggling between the choices. I simply want to have fun with the games. I hope the whole experience can be separated from that in real life. When I start thinking about the budget, the technical issue, the hardware performance, and so on, before really playing the game, more or less it has already buried my passion and enthusiasm to the game. As so that the gaming emerges with all other daily experience, eventually it is not that fun and interesting. Perhaps sooner or later, I will give up gaming at all one day.

I think I need to do something for this issue.

Perhaps just out of boredom, I made some simple statistics for my collection of video game in my room right now in the UK. The thought of making such statistics began when I was packing stuff into cardboard boxes for the moving next week. I looked at those DVD cases on the shelves, wondering how many of them have been completed in the past year. I didn't know the exact number at the moment, but I knew it should be very low.

So here comes the numbers. There are 90 titles, including expansion packs, on the three platforms: PC, Xbox 360, and Wii. Only 16 titles has been completed at least once or played for more than 15 hours. The platform with the highest completion ratio comes to Xbox 360, with 5 out of 19, that is, 26.3 per cent. The lowest one is of PC games, with 10 out of 66, a pathetic completion ratio of 15.2 per cent. However, no matter which platform it is in consideration, these statistics just shows a clear, simple message that I am a video game collector rather than a player.

As indicated in an older post on this blog, leaving games unfinished is pretty normal in my experience of playing video games. Taking the large number of collection and the limited off-work time into account, it is not difficult to realise why I cannot play through most of the games. As a result, I feel it is a waste of money. What is the point that I buy games but have no time to play them?

I don't intend to stop playing video games. Spending time in video games, whatever it is a rally racing or a fantasy RPG, still gives me much fun during the processes. On the other hand, I have more interests than just gaming, and I don't like the way I spend money and time on video game as I do right now. For example, I bring a sketch book with me to the UK but I never open it. It is a huge, violent vortex sucking me in; I want to play all those great titles but have no enough time, so I spend more time on gaming despite that I have no way to complete all of them.

Having a hobbit is not supposed to be so desperate like this. As I said at the beginning, to do something to stop this cycle is necessary, though I expect it is very difficult to change a long time habit as others. Nonetheless, maybe it is not as hard as it appears. Perhaps I only need to be determined and buy a single game at a time only after the previous game is completed. Or perhaps I also have to review how I spend time on a daily basis, then I may improve time management according to that. Hopefully, I can solve this problem soon.

Since receiving the Wii from my brother, I have not set it up due to the compatibility of the monitor: a 24" desktop LCD (1920X1080). The inbox video output cable of the Wii is an analog video cable. Without an official VGA cable as that offered by Microsoft for Xbox 360, I have no way to use this LCD to play video games with Wii. Although I tried to find some simple measures to solve this problem, unfortunately, I could only find a third-party VGA cable for Wii and PS3 on Amazon. This cable requires users to plug Wii with a TV set first and set the video type as 480P then. This is not a solution for me, I have no way to find a TV set in my accommodation.

Hence I decided to buy a TV box, which was more expensive than the VGA cable, however, I knew it definitely would work. I found one on Amazon and noticed a comment in the user's reviews saying that it lacked YPbPr cable, therefore I ordered such a cable as well. When I received all the stuff, and after setting the things up, I found that I missed something very important: there was no component video cable (the exclusive YPbPr output cable) with the Wii! For that, I had to order a compatible component video cable for Wii to support the desired 480P video output.

Of course I do not expect Wii can offer some thrilling graphics, but the quality of the analog video cable with a full HD LCD is a disaster. I could hardly recognise fonts on screen, everything looked pretty blurred. Even worse, when I played Medal of Hornor Heroes 2, I couldn't read the text because the font size was too small. This is the reason that I have to get a component video cable for the 480P graphics.

Indeed these troubles are worthy. At last I can play Wii and, as a matter of fact, I really enjoy it even playing it alone. Perhaps this is because I am used to play video game without any others sitting besides me. When I was a kid, I usually played video games with my brother. Well, actually, for most of the time, I was watching him playing games. But after he got in the university, I could only play games alone. Even in the university, living with other guys who played Starcraft, Counter Strike, and NBA Live9X, I didn't really play games with people. (At the time I only played M1 Tank Platoon II, European Air War, and many Star Wars games.) It has always been a very private experience to me. I guess this is probably the reason that I have never liked Wii until now. It is the time to change this by playing more Wii games. How about Wii Sport Resort or Resident Evil 4? I think it is a good idea to get these two next.